The Challenge of Counterfeit Drugs: A Comprehensive Review on Prevalence, Detection and Preventive Measures

Counterfeit drugs are a worldwide concern. This organized crime has deterrent effect on public health and on pharmaceutical business across the globe. Lack of comprehensive standardized definition of counterfeit drugs with global acceptance, higher benefits of cost ratio and intercomplexity of market and globalized network are the major reasons behind this. Unawareness among the stakeholders lack of intellectual property protection and social-economic factor also resulted in flourished market of fake drugs. Despite of several attempts made by global regulatory agencies, inefficient regulations, lax enforcement of existing legislation and lack of commitment by involved authorities still remain major loopholes, aggravating the serious problem of counterfeiting. Although use of techniques based on interference pattern, encryption, spectroscopy and chromatographic principles by pharmaceutical industries to authenticate genuine products has curtailed the problem to a limited extent. In order to efficiently control the organized crime of medicine counterfeiting, collective efforts of 'National Counterfeit Control Agencies', pharmaceutical industries, law regulatory agencies and public are essential. Strict legal enforcement, applications of comprehensive database, interlinked network and technological advancement are need of the hour. The purpose of this article is to overview all aspects of drug counterfeiting including current status and magnitude, effectiveness and limitation of existing technologies available to counter with particular attention to suggest possible roadmap to overcome the problem through uni-directional and focus global co-operation.